Who Inspires You? The Art of Alchemy and the Women Who Painted the Soul
- Oct 29
- 3 min read
Someone once said, “All successful people have one thing in common — they find someone who inspires them.
”Who would have known that one simple question — “Who inspires you?” — could become a doorway?
For me, it opened into a world of color, rebellion, and sacred transformation.
At first, I didn’t have an answer. I wasn’t looking for a muse; I was looking for a mirror. Then came Frida Kahlo — all fire and feeling — and Leonora Carrington — all magic and myth. Two women who lived in a time when art wasn’t just art, it was alchemy.
They painted pain and possibility into portals. They turned suffering into story, chaos into creation. And somewhere between their canvases and their courage, I began to find the pieces of myself.
🖤 Frida: The Body as Temple
Frida taught me that the body isn’t a limitation — it’s a landscape. Every scar, every heartbreak, every ache becomes brushstroke and offering.
She lived through immense pain, yet she refused to let it define her. Instead, she painted her reality, and in doing so, made her suffering sacred.
Her art is visceral — blood and bone and love intertwined — but beneath it all is a quiet revolution. She reminds us that we don’t have to be healed to be whole, and we don’t need permission to turn our pain into beauty.
Frida painted her truth, and in doing so, she gave others the courage to paint theirs.
🌙 Leonora: The Mind as Portal
Leonora Carrington arrived like a dream I’d been waiting to remember.
While Frida painted her reality, Leonora painted her otherworlds. She walked between myth and madness, turning the unseen into shimmering symbols — women who became stars, creatures born from moonlight, and spirits carrying cosmic eggs across surreal landscapes.
Her art whispered of transformation — not escape, but evolution.
She wasn’t interested in being anyone’s muse; she was too busy being the magician.
Her painting “The Giantess (The Guardian of the Egg)” feels like a self-portrait of the divine feminine itself — still, vast, nurturing, and fiercely protective of potential. The moment I saw it, something inside me said, that’s you.
🔮 The Era of Dreamers and Alchemists
Both women lived during the Modernist era — a time between wars when the world was unraveling and being reborn. Artists were searching for meaning beyond logic. They turned inward, into the realm of dreams, symbols, and soul.
This became known as Surrealism — an artistic rebellion that explored the subconscious, the mystical, and the emotional landscapes no one had dared to paint before.
Men like Salvador Dalí and René Magritte may have defined the movement publicly, but it was women like Frida, Leonora, Remedios Varo, and Dorothea Tanning who transformed it.
They reclaimed the mythic, the magical, and the mysterious — not as fantasy, but as truth.
While the men painted dreamscapes of desire, the women painted the soul’s awakening.
🜂 The Art of Alchemy
Surrealism wasn’t about escape. It was about integration.
It said, what if everything we’ve been taught to hide — our fears, desires, and dreams — are the keys to freedom?
That’s why their work still speaks to us witches, healers, and creatives today.
Frida and Leonora lived as alchemists — taking what was broken and making it sacred.
They didn’t just survive their time; they transmuted it.
And that, to me, is the heart of inspiration.
Not imitation — recognition.
When you find someone who inspires you, it’s not because you want to become them.
It’s because, through them, you remember what’s possible inside yourself.
🌹 A Reflection for You
Take a quiet moment and ask:
“If I lived in that era — with war outside and awakening inside — what would I paint, write, or create to stay alive?”
Because that’s what they did. And that’s what we’re still doing now — turning pain into portals, dreams into direction, and truth into light.
Frida painted her pain.
Leonora painted her dreams.
And me? I’m painting my life — one color, one word, one transformation at a time.
